John Kerry’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

John Kerry must be glad to see this week come to an end. He capped off a rough stretch with an astonishingly graceless (in at least two senses) performance while vacationing in Idaho. Kerry staged what was meant as an impressive photo-op by snowshoeing up to a ridge in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, and then snowboarding down. Here, Kerry strikes a typically humble pose for the cameras:
During Kerry’s descent, a Secret Service agent clipped him, causing him to fall. When a reporter asked him about the incident a few moments later, Kerry replied: “I don’t fall down. The son of a bitch knocked me over!”
Reporters later said that they had seen Kerry fall six times, even though Kerry was out of sight for part of the descent. Is is possible that Kerry could perform the unthinkable by causing the press corps to root for a Republican?
The “I don’t fall down” pronouncement is thought-provoking on its own terms, but even more so when paired with this story from a few days ago. Kerry was in Boston, taking the day off. He left his Beacon Hill mansion to do some shopping, accompanied by his daughter and a seven-car motorcade, including two police cars, three vans containing Secret Service agents, and two carloads of reporters. The shopping trip was coordinated by one of Bill Clinton’s advance men.
Kerry first went to a Border’s book store, where the reporters took notes as he browsed a pretentious selection of books–like The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. From the bookstore, Kerry and his caravan continued on to a sporting goods store, where Kerry bought a jockstrap.
I am not making this up. This story has not, to put it mildly, gotten sufficient press. What sort of man, exactly, would lead an entourage of policemen, Secret Service agents and reporters to a sporting goods store to watch him buy a jockstrap? (“Hey, guys, note the size on the box!”) The same sort of man, I suppose, who would yell, after falling down six times: “I don’t fall down. The son of a bitch knocked me over!”
This is really not a guy that we want to be President.